KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

ASPU Rector Ruben Mirzakhanyan handed certificates to the participants of “Sustainable Tourism Development in the Caucasus Region” – a two-year project implemented in cooperation with Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University and University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.

Twenty-four students and eleven lecturers from ASPU were involved in the project. Congratulating the participants on the successful completion of the project, Mr. Mirzakhanyan said ‘it is one of the major steps in the internationalization of the University. The Rector attached special importance to students’ participation in the project and advised them to improve their knowledge of foreign languages and participate in different programmes and projects implemented with ASPU’s partner universities.

Professor Ashot Khoetsyan, Project Coordinator and Head of the Chair of Geography and its Teaching Methods at ASPU, presented the peculiarities and results of the project. He stressed that the foreign partners of the project were pleased with the results.

“It’s very important and effective that the participating students studied educational tourism and different concepts of its implementation in different communities. It was equally important that they worked in cooperation with the local population,” Ashot Khoetsyan said. He added that the results presented by working groups were introduced in community development programmes.

The project aimed at studying prospects of sustainable tourism development in the South Caucasus region and implementing a joint programme to develop tourism in communities. During the two years of cooperation, the sides have been able to identify the challenges and opportunities for tourism development in different communities of Armenia and Georgia.

The case study in Armenia took place in Meghradzor community where students and teachers in groups worked in cooperation with local stakeholders to tackle several research questions focused on sustainable tourism development of the given community.